Models are known as much for the personality, party tricks and gimmicks as they are for their sexual prowess

“I can’t compare myself to the regular cam models that haven’t done adult films,” she says. “My guys are gonna expect me to do something more crazy than a girl playing video games or something. Like I’m not going to make any money from a guy that’s watched my scenes just playing a video game.”

From the early days of Jennicam, webcamming has been as much about the promise of the eventual money shot as it has been about all of the moments in between. With the tools of production in the hands of the models, they decide what those moments look like. “

Models can be as hardcore or reserved as they want, but everyone I’ve spoken with says it’s all about giving your fans what they want, and, according to Cox, that’s not always an orgasm.

As opposed to the “girlfriend experience” or the “porn star experience,” Lotts says she provides her fans with “the best friend experience”

“The majority of it’s just interaction and talking and people spilling their guts to each other. It’s just like psychotherapy, digital psychotherapy.”

“Eighty percent of it is interactivity — if we’re talking about hardcore cams — the final 10 percent is where there’s actually something sexual that happens,” Cox says. “The majority of it’s just interaction and talking and people spilling their guts to each other. It’s just like psychotherapy, digital psychotherapy. I literally used to watch the numbers and watch these people consume the amount they would consume, and it wasn’t anything more than just internet companionship. Like, ‘Hey, let’s press play on this movie at the same time on YouTube and watch it together.’ Play. Press pause. ‘You want to order a pizza? Let’s get a pizza going.’ Pause. Order a pizza. ‘Pizza’s here! Let’s eat pizza.’

The nature of interaction on cam sites has allowed a new breed of adult performers to emerge. Lotts tells me she shot a hardcore scene once. It was a girl-girl scene with Aspen Rae. It wasn’t as profitable as she’d hoped and her fans aren’t looking to her for that sort of hardcore action anyway.

Holland says she loves it “because it gives so many more girls so many more opportunities to do what they want with their bodies

“I think I play the-girl-next-door role the most,” Lotts says. “I think that’s how I come off. So, my audience is like those boys who had girl best friends in high school, and they’re just used to having girls to talk to. And they run their ideas by me, or they ask me their opinions. I kind of feel like a therapist sometimes.”

Lotts is constantly connected to her fans through Instagram and Twitter; she plays games with them on her streams, raffles off PlayStations and Oculus Rifts, and dresses up as their favorite video game and comic book characters at their request. For Lotts, her viewers aren’t just pay-to-play voyeurs but a community of close, personal friends.

“It’s a chat room,” she says. “We’re just all hanging out as friends. They hang out as friends outside of my chat room now, because they’ve met outside of my chat room. I’ve created my own little community within this giant community. And the reward is, you get to see me naked every once in awhile.”

Throughout my conversations with Aspen, ber, the conversation always comes back to connection: that same connection that Kelly Holland and Clinton Cox speak of, the one Mark Zuckerberg proselytizes to investors and journalists. It’s the same thing that drove millions of people to flock to . Cox says he doesn’t see the difference between what these girls do and what plays out on social media every day, and with mainstream celebrities like Kim Kardashian proudly exposing their bodies on mainstream apps like Instagram, it’s hard to argue with that logic.